[pz]

This approach makes a lot of sense. Advertising is a marketplace and this is a great way to bootstrap advertising inventory. Its inevitable they will allow advertisers to manage ad spend directly through OpenAI but right now the product is too new to capture meaningful ad budget. This way they can begin testing delivery and develop proof points around ROI and build towards larger ad spend directly.

[windexh8er]

Clearly the Meta execs they hired are about as useful as most 3-letter exec titles because, wow, did OAI miss the boat again. Personally I'm glad they've made as many missteps as they have, but quite the amateur move to not seize the market opportunity and keep it holistically for themselves. They took nothing from Google's paved road of incumbency in this segment.

Again, personally, I'm glad at yet another miss by Altman. But to claim ChatGPT is too new? Apparently hundreds of millions of users doesn't cut it these days. And if anyone thinks OAI has been anything remotely "strategic" around their product, well... Then you must enjoy shooting darts in the dark.

[stingraycharles]

This appears to be more like a toxic rant than a reasonable argument.

> quite the amateur move to not seize the market opportunity and keep it holistically for themselves

What does this even mean? There are so many businesses, especially in the advertising world, that first start white-label reselling so that you can scale up super easy and quickly. Then once market is captured, you integrate everything. This is a common adtech playbook, and the Meta execs know that as well.

And I say this as someone who founded & exited their own adtech platform.

I would not recommend OpenAI to start developing an RTB platform right now at all. Just first prove there is a market and the value is there.

> They took nothing from Google's paved road of incumbency in this segment.

Google bought / acquired themselves into the online adtech market mostly. Yes they have adwords, which was only really becoming something a decade after Google launched, which they paired with their acquisition of half the adtech giants (DoubleClick, Invite and AdMeld). So yeah, not a great example.

> I'm glad at yet another miss by Altman. But to claim ChatGPT is too new? Apparently hundreds of millions of users doesn't cut it these days.

This is just a useless attack for no reason.

[windexh8er]

> This appears to be more like a toxic rant than a reasonable argument.

Thank you for your subjective analysis.

> What does this even mean? There are so many businesses, especially in the advertising world, that first start white-label reselling so that you can scale up super easy and quickly. Then once market is captured, you integrate everything. This is a common adtech playbook, and the Meta execs know that as well.

This would be interesting if any of it were true in the case of OAI. They haven't captured the market and they don't appear as if they will. They're at the losing end of Anthropic and Google right now. The Meta execs OAI has don't understand the game today, in my opinion based on their approach.

> And I say this as someone who founded & exited their own adtech platform. > I would not recommend OpenAI to start developing an RTB platform right now at all. Just first prove there is a market and the value is there.

So OAI, their financials, their business models, their number of customers and their competition all aligned with your exit in adtech? Somehow I doubt it, but feel free to share.

> Google bought / acquired themselves into the online adtech market mostly. Yes they have adwords, which was only really becoming something a decade after Google launched, which they paired with their acquisition of half the adtech giants (DoubleClick, Invite and AdMeld). So yeah, not a great example.

Actually, it is a good example. Because when Google did this they had zero competition. Now Google is the competition. So, yeah... In line with the new reality. You don't get to compare OAI with Google 20+ years ago.

> This is just a useless attack for no reason.

No, it's reality for a lot of us. Altman is tied to a lot of unsavory players. If you want to apologize for these types of people then feel free to be their cheerleader. The great part of HN is that these comments have and carry market sentiments (all across the board). I could say your comments are useless, out-of-touch, founder drivel... But I haven't.

[crowcroft]

> product is too new to capture meaningful ad budget

I disagree entirely. As someone who works in advertising every single company I've talked to would be queueing up to test ads on ChatGPT if they launched a Google Ads like platform.

If ChatGPT doesn't have enough scale to do it, then they shouldn't do ads.

[arcticfox]

ChatGPT has more web traffic than X, Reddit, Bing... Crazy to say they wouldn't be able to capture meaningful ad budget. IMO partnering on this is a blunder.

[ssl-3]

It comes together quickly, though. They don't need to learn how to become a company that knows how to sell advertising; they can instead just pay some other entity to do that.

It's OK to not have complete vertical integration. (They probably don't fix their own toilets, either.)

And if it makes as much money as it seems must be possible, then they can just buy one of the advertising partners that are already have plugged into their system and shitcan the rest.